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I am not sure “Happy International Women’s Day” is the right phrase

March 8, 2013 • Jenna MacKay

Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed International Women’s Day is a hot topic. This makes sense because most of my friends and individuals/groups I follow are feminist. A number of posts state “Happy International Women’s Day” or comment that today is a day for women and girls to feel special. And it is true. Today is a day for celebration. It is important to celebrate our survival and accomplishments and we deserve to feel special. However…

I don’t want to by cynical or negative, but I am uncomfortable with “Happy International Women’s Day” and individualized comments related to the self-esteem and self-worth of women and girls. Happy doesn’t feel like the right word. Today is a celebration of resistance and resilience. It is a day to reflect on the complicated, multiple and intersecting oppressions women and girls have faced historical and continue to face today. Today started as a Socialist day of political action for working women in 1909. It became popularized by the UN during the second-wave women’s movement as a day to recognize gender inequality and the international rights of women and girls. “Happy” feels like Valentine’s Day. Like IWD is a day to love women without a woman-loving politic.

I don’t want to say we shouldn’t be happy, but it seems to me as though it undermines the political intentions of today. By using such blanket statements we engage with IWD without explicitly recognizing the gender inequality that is embedded within all of our daily lives. We fail to raise the consciousness of others or discuss the ways in which we are committed to ending gendered oppressions. This is particularly of important as Harper has clawed back women’s rights and we are failing to integrate principles of gender equity into Canadian culture, politics and society.

So, are you happy? If so, why? About what? If not, what would the world look like for you to be happy? What are we committed to resisting? What do we resist everyday? How? Why do we think women/girls are special? Is it just because they are women/girls or do they embody characteristics or qualities that we appreciate? Are they doing amazing things?

(UCFW Canada)
The Contemporary Urgencies of Audre Lorde’s Legacy

March 3, 2013 • Ronak Ghorbani

This coming Thursday will launch a two-week long celebration of poet and activist Audre Lorde. There are free events happening across Toronto and at both York University and The University of Toronto. Check out the list of events below.

Community Arts Practice, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University in association with Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto Invite you to

THE CONTEMPORARY URGENCIES OF AUDRE LORDE’S LEGACY, MARCH 7-21, 2013

1) Medicines for Survival: Indigenous Knowledge and the Sacred: a lecture by M. Jacqui Alexander

DATE: Thursday March 7th

PLACE: HNES (Health, Nursing, and Environmental Studies)building room 140, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

TIME: 6 p.m.

http://www.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/fac_wgsi.html

2) Litanies for our Survival: Visual and Performative Conversations with Audre Lorde and inaugural exhibition in new Community Arts Practice Space

DATE: Thursday March 7th

PLACE: HNES (Health, Nursing, and Environmental Studies)building room 283 and throughout the building, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

TIME: 7:30 p.m.

3) Film screening, Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984-1992 (directed by Dagmar Schultz)

Followed by panel discussion with Dagmar Schultz, Marion Kraft, Gloria Wekker, M. Jacqui Alexander, Carol Allain, Farrah Khan, Bonita Lawrence

DATE: Friday March 15th

PLACE: William Doo Auditorium, University of Toronto, 45 Willcocks Street

TIME: 6:30 p.m.

http://www.audrelorde-theberlinyears.com/emails/orgs_english_short.html

4) What’s (Homo)Sexuality got to do with it? Lecture by Gloria Wekker, with responses from Anna Agathangelou and Jin Haritaworn, chaired by Ena Dua

DATE: Tuesday March 19th,

PLACE: HNES (Health, Nursing, and Environmental Studies)building room 140, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

TIME: 1 p.m.

5) “After the 9-5 in Audre’s Livingroom”

(An intimate, collaborative poetry marathon recite &r espond multidisciplinary hangout!)

presented by backforward collective

DATE: Thursday March 21st

PLACE: Whippersnapper Gallery, 594b Dundas St. West

TIME: 6 - 11 pm

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. PLEASE ADVERTISE WIDELY.

CHECK OUT: https://www.facebook.com/events/563445090342037/

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: #audrelordeslegacy2013

YORK UNIVERSITY SPONSORS: Community Arts Practice, Office of the Dean; ACE and the Seminar Series in Equity and Diversity at FES; Faculty of Health; Centre for Feminist Research at York University and Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies

YORK UNIVERSITY DIGITAL MAP: http://www.yorku.ca/yorkweb/maps/KeeleMap.pdf

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SPONSORS: Women and Gender Studies; Principal’s Initiatives Fund at New College; Equity Studies; Caribbean Studies; Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education, OISE; Centre for the Study of the United States; Sexual Diversity Studies; Anti-Racism and Diversity; Status of Women; Cinema Studies; Canadian Studies

CONTACT:
anique.j.jordan@gmail.com
or
Honor Ford-Smith, PhD.
Associate Professor
Community and Environmental Arts
Faculty of Environmental Studies
280, HNES Bldg
York University
4700 Keele St,
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

phone: 416-736-2100 X22629
fax: 416-736-5679
Toronto conference: Making Noise! Learn. Act. Heal.

February 12, 2013 • Julia Horel

The UARR would like to invite you to the Making Noise! Learn. Act. Heal. Community Conference on Gender-based Violence on March 1st and 2nd.

Media, Art & Performances!
Supports & Resources.
Self-care Body Work.
Interactive Workshops.
Strategies for addressing gender-based violence.

Making Noise! Learn. Act. Heal. Community Conference on Gender-based Violence is a gathering aimed at providing a space to explore interactive, practical, artistic and healing ways to address and prevent gender-based violence. The conference wraps up the three-year Making Noise! Initiative which has engaged over 500 diverse youth and people who work with youth across the GTA.

Making Noise!
LEARN.ACT.HEAL.
Community Conference on Gender-based Violence

Date:
Friday, March 1st 5:30pm - 8:30pm &
Saturday, March 2nd 10am - 6pm

Location:
Ryerson University, Oakham House
63 Gould Street (@ Church)

*Register now for FREE lunch, TTC tokens & snacks. All are welcome. Please contact us to let us know how we can accommodate you.
*For more info or to register email: info@urbanalliance.ca or call 416-703-6607 x 3
Eventbrite Registration: http://makingnoiseconference.eventbrite.ca/
*Please visit www.urbanalliance.ca/conference for Conference Workshops, schedule, keynote and performers.
Calling all trans, gender queer, two spirit, gender variant, and questioning youth!

February 11, 2013 • Sheila Sampath

Tired of how poorly we are represented in the media?
Fed up with being measured against beauty standards that don’t celebrate you?
Tired of comic books that fail to represent you?
Tired of stories about trans people written by cis folks?
Want to read stories you can relate to?

……..well……

Why not write those stories and make that media?

Super Trans Powers is an upcoming workshop series offered by Supporting Our Youth and ArtReach Toronto at the Sherbourne Health Centre, for trans, two spirit, genderqueer, gender variant and questioning youth (up to 29 yrs).
Our workshops are going to focus on the creation of an anthology of writing, comic art, illustrations and visual art that represents us as trans, genderqueer, two spirit, gender variant and questioning youth in a respectful, fun, exciting and empowering way! We’ll have writing, visual art, and layout workshops. Come join us and find story telling skills you never new you had! Explore new ways to express your unique experience! Learn some tricks to layout your work in a book or zine! See your work in print!

Yeah that’s right, we’re gonna make a book!

It’s gonna be awesome. And FREE!

STARTING THIS COMING TUESDAY FEB. 12!

Visual art workshops with SYRUS MARCUS WARE!

This is gonna rule!

At the Sherbourne Health Centre on Tuesday evenings 7-9.
Snacks, TTC tokens and ASL-English Interpretation will be provided. The Sherbourne Health Centre is a wheelchair accessible space.
Please contact us with any access needs or concerns.

ASL:
http://youtu.be/uJ_7n7-VtgY

For updates and more info visit
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Super-Trans-Powers/145175488918168#

or e-mail kit wilson-yang at
supertranspowers@gmail.com
American Pie, Superbad and Lessons from Anxious Male Teens

January 24, 2013 • Guest Blogger

by Abby Plener

During a discussion about how the media contributes to teens’ sexual education, a classmate of mine in a feminist political theory seminar declared “I learned everything I needed to know from American Pie. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 1999 hit teen comedy, the movie follows four male friends who make a pact to lose their virginities before they graduate high school. As their ringleader Kevin astutely puts it:

[Transcription after the jump] (more inside…)
Recommended Reading: In Transition (Ryerson Review of Journalism)

January 7, 2013 • Julia Horel

When even Canada’s top LGBT publication struggles to find the right words, will journalists ever accurately reflect the complexities within the trans community?

The Ryerson Review of Journalism has a piece up about Elisha Lim, friend of Shameless, and their struggle to have their preferred pronouns used in queer media:

“There was this one moment where I said I prefer the pronoun ‘they,’” Lim says. “It was kind of my shaky first attempt so I wasn’t too confident about it, and the interviewer sort of laughed and said, ‘We’re not going to use that. But anyway what about…?’ I walked away after the interview and thought, ‘Now wait just one minute, I think that I should be mad!’”

The article also includes Shameless cartoonist Coco Riot:

Riot, a Toronto-based visual artist and cartoonist for Shameless magazine, is glad the community made its disappointment known. Having faced similar constraints speaking to the Montreal Gazette and winning an apology from the newspaper for its pronoun misuse, Riot knew “they” was a pronoun worth fighting for—especially at an LGBT publication.

Check out the whole article here.
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Coming Out Wrong with Jesse Dangerously

December 5, 2012 • Anne Thériault

Halifax rap legend Jesse Dangerously is known for using his music to combat sexism, racism, fat-phobia, homophobia, and a whole lot of other toxic stuff that we encounter in our day to day lives. Dangerously, who is now based out of Ottawa, recently released a song called Coming Out Wrong on the Fun Razor Mix Tape (a collaborative album put together by artists participating in and raising funds for the NOFRIENDS tour).

Coming Out Wrong, which was made over the beat from Tribe One’s Different, totally blew me away; it was so unlike any other hip hop song I’d ever heard. In Coming Out Wrong, Dangerously talks about his struggles with gender identity, and the effect those struggles had on him as he made his way through school and out into the hip hop world. These were all issues that I’d never even heard mentioned in a rap song before, let alone discussed in such detail, and listening to this track gave me a lot of FEELINGS.

[YouTube video of Jesse Dangerously singing “Coming Out Wrong.” Transcription at the end of this post.]

I recently had the chance to talk to Jesse Dangerously about this song, and he had some incredibly personal, informative and fascinating things to say – check out our Q&A below!

Q: So this is a really amazing and intense song! Can you talk a bit about what it was like to release a song like this in the hip hop community, which tends to be pretty dominated by heterosexual men?(more inside…)
The Comfort of Queer Family Wisdom

November 20, 2012 • Elisha Lim

I think that last year was one of my most humbling years. I’d become used to a certain level of respect and dignity, and when I lost it, I was kind of floored. I left my home of Toronto. Toronto - where I had been part of the majority. I was an immigrants’ kid, I was university educated, I knew lots of activist jargon and where to shop for shoes.

But last year I moved to Quebec. I also fell in with a clique of nationalist French Canadians. That complicated cultural puritanism deserves its own article. But what I experienced is a universal problem: being unwelcome. I didn’t speak enough of the language. My opinions were routinely undermined. I was told that I didn’t belong. I was ignored and overlooked. This would be stressful for anyone, and it felt even more stressful when I was usually the only person of colour in the room.

It’s a kind of isolation that lots of people face, because of racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, so many reasons. But it was new to me. I started to think - it must be true - I must be parasitic and unworthy. My self-esteem sank.

In the past I had wondered if my activism had been too cheesy. But once I moved to Montreal I realized that no activism is cheesy. If someone is really isolated, it means so much to have someone fight for you, and to document your experience.

That’s what these books, and these people, did for me: Barbara Cameron and Mitsuye Yamada talked about racism in the 1979 book This Bridge Called My Back. Richard Fung remembers challenging the white art establishment in “13 Conversations”. Punam Khosla fought for queer Asian visibility during Desh Pardesh. Rae Spoon made trans love songs on youtube.

(Elisha Lim)

I absorbed these precious books and moments like sunshine. They gave me back my strength and dignity.

Now I’ve illustrated these people and their quotes. I hope that they find their way across queer homes everywhere so that no matter where you are, you will find them, and know that you are not alone.

Buy it for yourself or for a friend from my etsy store. Spread the word. These are members of our queer family legacy, and a promise that you belong to something bigger.

(Elisha Lim)

WIth love, Elisha.
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Guest Post: Why “men’s rights” groups are wrong

November 14, 2012 • Guest Blogger

By Jesse McLaren
Originally published at Socialist Worker

Misogynist Warren Farrell, invited by “Men’s Issues Awareness at UofT”, gets exposed by UofTstudentsAgainstSexism@gmail.com (socialistworkercanada.com)

“Men’s rights” groups are a growing phenomenon, with “men’s centres” and “men’s issues awareness” clubs appearing on campuses. Manipulating men’s anxieties faced with neoliberalism and austerity, “men’s issues” groups ignore the poverty, racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia that men and women face, and instead scapegoat the women’s movement and progressive movements in general.

Men’s Issues Awareness at UofT claims it wants to “build a movement centered on Men’s Issues which will engage in consciousness-raising, public education and efforts to change public policy” in order to “engage in critiques of contemporary society” and “focus on positive activism to advance a healthier society.” This group is part of the “Canadian Association for Equality,” who claim they “believe the goal of true equality and human rights is best served by conducting inclusive conversations based on facts and evidence, not by promoting ideology or special interest agendas.” They want “men’s centres” on every university campus.

The rhetoric of “equality,” “diversity,” “human rights” and “inclusivity” that these groups use can certainly seem appealing, as can their claim to “provide support for individuals whose equality rights have been denied.” And their claim of “evidence not ideology” gives them a semblance of objectivity, which they apply to issues many people are concerned about: “men’s health, fathers and family issues, boys issues, suicide, violence, safety, workplace issues, crime and punishment.”

There is certainly a kernel of truth to what these groups claim: men do experience bullying, suicide, occupational injuries, violence, and specific health issues. But nobody has ever denied that (contrary to claims that these issues are being ignored in general, and undermined by women’s issues specifically). The problem with “men’s rights” is how they generalize these experiences, who they ignore and who they blame. These groups claim there is a “large societal pattern of discrimination, ignorance and harmful public policy that disadvantages boys and men.” This implies that men are oppressed as men, and in relation to or because of women—a claim that is justified using simplistic sound-bytes and “evidence” that is cherry-picked, ideologically-driven, and easily debunked. (more inside…)
An Open Letter to the AGO About Frida Kahlo’s Unibrow

November 6, 2012 • Guest Blogger

by Sarah Mortimer

Dear AGO,

The week of October 20, while walking past the Drake Hotel, one of your employees handed me a card that said I should wear this unibrow in order to get 50% off the price of admission to your exhibit “Frida and Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting.” I am glad that Frida Kahlo’s work is here in Toronto and that you are eager to have people come see it, but I can’t help but think this unibrow stunt isn’t how Kahlo would have wished to be remembered.

An outspoken woman who was a devoted communist, Kahlo was much more than just a black stripe above the eyes. She was, in every sense, a radical. Her paintings, which place strong emphasis on Indigenous Mexican imagery, represent a highly imaginative style and portray women’s experiences in a manner more explicit than any of her contemporaries. Kahlo’s iconic self-portraits include depictions of everything from her imagining of her of her own birth and nursing experiences, to her painful miscarriage and tumultuous relationship with painter Diego Rivera. With no lack of spilled blood or ripe guts on display, they are some of the most powerful images in feminist art.

Yet, when I wear this unibrow, and when I see others wearing it, it doesn’t feel like much more than a silly act of publicity. On Saturday, October 20, the Toronto Star showcased photos of people wearing these unibrows in front of photobooths you’ve installed for the show, and where patrons are encouraged to take Frida-like snapshots in exchange for a discount on the exhibit. In most of these pictures, people are laughing or making funny faces, communicating to the camera that the black fuzz above their eyes is part of a costume and nothing that should be taken too seriously. In one photo, a little girl wags her fingers by her ears and sticks her tongue out at the camera. In another, a man laughs discreetly from behind a hardhat. In each of these photos, the subject tells us that they are wearing the unibrow not in an earnest tribute to the artist and her work, but with a cool and distant irony.

I hate to be a joykill, here, AGO, but since when did celebrating an artist who challenged our ideas of feminine beauty by refusing to change the way she looked involve breaking her down through the implicit public ridicule of her appearance? Over the course of her lifetime and afterwards, Frida Kahlo’s unibrow was viewed as many things–striking, daring, odd, challenging, coy, studied, bold, memorable, and the reason why so many men fell love with her–but never as a city-wide joke. Why start now? (more inside…)